


on the other side

by skeilig



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Bathroom Sex, Blowjobs, Clothed Sex, Eddie is the homewrecker for once, Face-Fucking, Frottage, Infidelity, M/M, Mentioned Richie/OMC, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, and kinking on it.. let's be real, full disclosure this is a fanfic of my own fanfic, it's equality!, the hook for this was hate sex but this is like... sad hate sex, wet dick Eddie Kaspbrak, you guys can read this but I wrote this one for me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27534193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeilig/pseuds/skeilig
Summary: A year after Richie and Eddie called off the affair, they meet again at Ben and Bev’s wedding. This time, Richie is the one who isn’t single. They just can’t catch a break, huh?
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 116





	on the other side

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Escape from L.A.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22697983) by [skeilig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeilig/pseuds/skeilig). 



> This is fanfic of my own fanfic because that’s the point I’m at in life. It’s been a long year. This is a spinoff of my fic Escape from LA, picking up after chapter 5, but it's the angst-redux, infidelity 2: electric boogaloo version. 
> 
> If you haven’t read the OG fic or need a refresher, here’s the ‘what you missed on glee’: We’re two years post-Ch2, Eddie and Richie had an affair but they called it off a year and a half ago, they haven’t really spoken since (Richie said he needed space), and Eddie separated from his wife a year ago. (They have kids so it’s like ~complicated~ or whatever.) Now they’re back together for Ben and Bev’s wedding! I wonder what will happen!

“Can we talk?” Eddie asks Richie when he finds them next to each other at the bar. They’ve been avoiding each other since the rehearsal dinner the previous night, where Eddie had taken some cheap shots at Richie’s wedding date and, apparently, new boyfriend. 

(“What are your plans for his thirtieth?” Eddie had said last night, smirking at Richie over the top of his wine glass while the boyfriend, Caleb, was across the room chatting with Bev. “Oh, funny,” Richie said, then paused, a malicious smile growing on his face before he added, “No plans yet since it’s still two years off.” Eddie’s jaw dropped a little. “Gross. He’s really in his twenties? That’s literally just gross.” Richie waggled his eyebrows. “I know, right?”) 

The bartender flips the cap off Richie’s fresh bottle of beer; Richie takes it, takes a sip, and then looks at Eddie with eyebrows raised. “Um.”

“Privately, for just a second?” Eddie elaborates, nodding toward the dark hallway that leads away from the party. 

It may not be entirely necessary to go into one of the bathrooms and close and lock the door behind them, but Eddie doesn’t want any prying ears. He’s already trembling as he leans against the door and looks at Richie, who’s standing in front of the sink, ruffling his hair in the mirror. 

“Okay, so,” Eddie says, his voice already high-pitched from tension. “Message received. You’ve successfully proved that you don’t need me, or whatever.” 

“Eddie, actually, not everything is about you,” Richie says. He’s still looking at his own reflection, turning his chin either way to examine his stubbled jaw. 

Eddie stays with his back pressed to the closed door. “Why didn’t you talk to me for a year?” 

Richie meets Eddie’s eyes in the mirror. “You didn’t talk to me either–” 

“You didn’t want to tell me you were fucking someone else?” 

“Yeah, maybe I didn’t,” Richie says, looking back to his own reflected face. “You obviously aren’t taking it well.” 

“Yeah, I’m not taking it well because you cut me out when I really fucking needed you, Richie.” Eddie takes a step toward him. “This isn’t about who you stick your dick in.” 

“I feel like it might be a little bit about that.” Richie finally turns from the mirror to lean against the sink. He crosses his arms; his shoulders look ridiculously broad in his suit, forming a sharp right angle. 

Eddie looks away, shaking his head. “Yeah, okay, listen; am I allowed to be hurt about it?” 

“Yeah, Eddie, you’re allowed to have whatever feelings you want,” Richie says. “And so am I. I don’t have to bend over backward for you all the time and I don’t have to be your friend if it breaks my heart and I can fuck other people.” 

Richie’s voice betrays some emotion for the first time all weekend, something wobbly and raw underneath his front. It takes a moment for Eddie to fully process it, but he does, with a dawning horror, as shame flushes his body from head to toe. He realizes out loud, “So, you don’t want to be friends anymore. You said– Richie, you _said_ that it wasn’t gonna be forever.” 

“Maybe– I dunno– maybe it still hurts too much, okay?” As Richie says it, he turns away from Eddie again, taking a step toward the door. 

“I left Myra,” Eddie blurts. It works; Richie freezes in his tracks. “I was gonna tell you last summer but–” 

Richie interrupts, one hand flying up. The gesture effectively silences Eddie, creating space for Richie to quietly ask, “You left her a year ago?” 

“We’re separated,” Eddie clarifies, his cheeks already burning from the confession that was worded too strongly, too leadingly. He has to walk it back a little now. “Not divorced, and we haven’t– But I moved out.” 

Richie stares at him. “And you didn’t think to tell me?” 

“Richie you weren’t talking to me. I thought you were over me, right? So it wouldn’t have changed anything. Right?” Eddie’s voice gets a little desperate and he laughs, shakily. “You’re with _Caleb_ now.” 

“Fuck you,” Richie spits out, and he seems like he actually means it this time, for the first time, of all the times he’s said it. “You’re such a fucking asshole. Resenting _me_ for… For trying to… When _you’re_ the one who…” 

“Yeah, okay,” Eddie says, emotion rising in his throat. He feels like he wants to cry all of a sudden. “So a year ago if I told you that I– I– moved out, that we were separated–” He’s stammering and his hands are trembling but he manages to keep speaking, “–what would you have done? You would’ve, what? Come back to New York? You would’ve dumped your boyfriend? I don’t think so, Richie.” 

Richie rubs his temples, eyes closed behind his glasses. “We could’ve talked– Or, I guess I would’ve just liked to know, you know? You should have told me.” 

“You really broke my heart, Richie,” Eddie mutters. 

“Well," Richie laughs bitterly, gesturing between the two of them. “Yeah! Back at ya!”

Eddie shivers and crosses his arms, feeling suddenly chilled. The day’s worth of sweat clings to his skin, under his arms and on the small of his back. “This sucks,” he says plaintively. 

“It does,” Richie agrees, without much passion. 

“We’ve had now, what, three chances to get this right?” Eddie says. “Maybe this is a sign. Time to give it up.” 

Frowning, Richie reaches to pat Eddie’s shoulder, his hand landing heavily then squeezing once. It’s an awkward gesture, an attempt at comfort without intimacy; Richie dodges eye contact, looking at the wall past him. For a moment his grip on Eddie’s shoulder begins to loosen and he takes in a breath like he’s going to say something—but then he pauses, and tugs Eddie into a hug. 

Eddie goes, two shuffling steps across the tile bathroom floor until he collides with Richie’s chest. Richie wraps both arms around Eddie’s back and, god, Eddie hasn’t been held—hasn’t been _touched_ really—in over a year. He melts against him with a shuddering breath. 

“Whoa, okay,” Richie mutters in mild surprise at the reaction, holding him closer. 

Eddie stands there with his cheek pressed against Richie’s shoulder and they start to sway slightly, back and forth. Slowly, Eddie unfurls, wrapping his arms around Richie’s waist to hold him back. Richie’s really warm; Eddie can feel his body heat through his clothes where they’re pressed together, from Eddie’s cheek to his chest and stomach. Eddie’s neck is starting to ache from being craned to one side but he doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want this to end. 

They didn’t take enough time to do this, even when they were sleeping together. They didn’t luxuriate in touch like this.

Richie takes in a breath; Eddie hears his lips smack when they part. He says, “Well.”

Eddie lifts his head and kisses him. 

It’s not heated right away, and it doesn’t last long. After a second, Richie rears back in surprise, but at the same time his hand flies up to cup Eddie’s jaw, holding him in place. Richie’s eyebrows raise, a wordless question: _Are we doing this?_

When Eddie kisses him again, Richie doesn’t pull away. It’s a hard press of lips and teeth at first and then it melts, Richie’s mouth opening, hot and soft, to Eddie’s tongue. They’re both breathing hard already, Richie cradling Eddie’s face and Eddie gripping onto his arms, rising up on his toes to press back against him. The tension builds before it seems to snap. In a few clumsy steps, Richie backs Eddie up against the wall opposite the sink. Eddie’s back collides with it forcefully enough to knock the air out of him. Richie pins him to the wall with his hips and dives into his throat, scraping his teeth over the sensitive skin under his jaw. 

Eddie clutches at Richie’s shoulders, digging his fingers into the thick fabric of his coat. His head thunks back against the wall and when he opens his eyes he catches sight of his own reflection in the mirror across from them. His stomach drops at the sight of Richie’s body completely eclipsing his own, the back of his head bent down. Eddie brings his hand up to twist his fingers in Richie’s hair and Richie groans, leaving a cooling wet trail over Eddie’s jaw and neck. 

“Don’t fucking give me hickeys,” Eddie mutters, pulling harder at Richie’s hair. It’s shorter than it used to be. 

"I’m going to,” Richie says, and bites down on his skin. 

Breathless, but with enough fire to sound angry, Eddie says, “I haven’t fucked anyone else, you know. I haven’t touched anyone, Richie, not since you.” 

Richie hums and mouths at his ear, tonguing at the shell and breathing heavily over the sensitive, wet skin. Eddie full-body shivers and bites off the beginning of a moan, before he spits out, “Stop, I fucking hate that.” 

“Do you really?” Richie murmurs directly into his ear before he resumes. 

Eddie digs his fingernails into the back of his neck, where he’s clinging onto him, and twists away, wrenching his own head to one side. “I’m fucking serious, stop it.” 

“Okay, sorry,” Richie says, pulling back to blink at him for a moment, his face open and blank, hard to read and sort of disconcertingly free of emotion. “What do you want, then?”

“Um.” Eddie pauses for a moment, unsure what he does want and even less sure how to articulate it. The thing is, Eddie does like it when Richie gets slobbery all over his ear, and Richie obviously knows that, remembers it was a surefire way to get Eddie squirming and moaning beneath him. 

So instead of saying anything, Eddie grabs Richie by the lapels to drag him down for another searing kiss. 

“Okay,” Richie mumbles into it. He’s not quite playing along, not opening his mouth to Eddie’s prodding tongue. “We should probably make this quick.”

That lights up Eddie’s body with a flash of anger, nauseating in his gut and hot on his face. 

Make this _quick_. Make it quick and then it’ll be over and they’ll—what?—never talk about it again? Not see each other for another year? Richie will keep living clear across the country from Eddie, and he’ll keep dating and fucking other people?

So Eddie lets the roiling heat under his skin guide him; he wraps an arm around Richie’s waist and flips their positions. Richie goes easily—he always reacted well to being pushed around a bit—and braces himself on his elbows, facing the wall. Eddie crowds in behind him, fumbling for Richie’s belt. He has a hell of a time undoing the belt because for one he can’t see it, all he can see is the broad expanse of Richie’s back, filling up his entire range of vision, and two, Richie keeps pressing up against him, arching his back and rubbing his ass against Eddie’s crotch. Eddie is, of course, achingly hard, enough so that his teeth hurt. 

Richie doesn’t help with the belt or with the button of his pants, but Eddie eventually manages to get his hand around him. Richie sighs and swears under his breath, rocking his hips into Eddie’s hand and back against his pelvis. 

“Did you miss me?” Eddie asks without thinking. The words are out there and he winces in their aftermath. 

“Oh god,” Richie mutters, sounding mildly annoyed. “Are we gonna do that whole thing?” 

Eddie tightens his grip around Richie’s cock, drawing out a half-pained hiss. “Do you think about me?” he asks instead, his voice low in his throat. “When you’re fucking him, do you ever think about me?”

“Eddie, Jesus,” Richie whispers, his hands making fists against the wall. “Fucking psycho.”

Tighter, and Eddie jerks his hips forward, pushing Richie bodily into the wall. Richie gasps and squirms a little. He could push back and free himself if he wanted to, Eddie knows that, Richie knows that, but Richie stays there, penned in between Eddie’s body and the wall. 

“Do you?” Eddie asks again. Richie’s starting to leak into his hand; his hips make aborted little trusts forward, searching for friction, but Eddie doesn’t move his hand, just holds him tighter still. 

“Yes,” Richie admits, his voice small and embarrassed. “Yes, sometimes. I have.”

“Good,” Eddie says, and now he does start to move his hand, methodically jacking him. Richie whines and his forehead thunks against the wall. “I’ve thought about you every time I jerked off for a year.”

“God, fuck,” Richie gasps, thumping one hand weakly against the wall. “Eddie.” 

“I watch porn but I still end up thinking about you,” Eddie confesses. 

That’s about as far as he can push it. He fumbles at his own pants, trying to pull them down without taking one hand off Richie. He manages, but it takes a minute of frustrated grumbling, Richie still trying to grind back against him, which is counterproductive. 

Eddie sighs in some relief when he finally presses bare into Richie’s skin. He’s already slick with precome, built up more than usual as if to really demonstrate just how pent-up he’s been. Richie stands with his legs spread open, pants pooled around his ankles. His crisp shirt is wrinkled and slightly sweat-damp where it was tucked into his pants all night. It hangs over his ass. Eddie lifts it so he can slot his dick between Richie’s cheeks, rubbing against him with at first a nearly painful amount of friction that quickly abates as Eddie’s precome keeps leaking in a clear stream, making for a smooth glide of skin on skin. 

“Fuck, you’re wet,” Richie mutters, and Eddie flushes a little, embarrassed that he commented on it. But then he says, “I bet I could take you just like this,” and the heat in Eddie’s core turns sharply from shame to arousal, or some intoxicating mix of the two, probably. 

“Yeah, you think so?” Eddie asks, and Richie nods, pressing back. 

But he can’t fuck him, not really, because they don’t have lube and Eddie barely has the patience for this anyway. Eddie wants to eat him alive. He wants to spin him around so he can grind against his dick and he wants to shove him face-first into the wall and rub himself off on his ass and he wants to fuck his mouth and he wants to choke on his cock, and he wants all of it at once, it’s dizzying. 

So Eddie says it: “I can’t decide how I want you.” 

Richie whines at that, grinding back against him. Eddie thumbs at the pucker of his asshole, spreading his precome and dipping inside, barely, just to the first knuckle. Richie’s back arches, curving away from him. 

“How do you want it?” Eddie asks him. “Like this?” 

“Yeah,” Richie breathes. 

“Okay,” Eddie says and crowds against him, kicking his feet apart farther. 

“This is familiar,” Richie grunts out at some point, maybe a minute later, the bathroom full of the sounds of their heavy breathing and slick, slapping skin. 

Eddie, panting against his shoulder, slurs, “Whaddya mean?” 

“First time we hooked up,” Richie says, and there’s a smile in his voice now. Eddie looks up wildly and sees half of his face, the grimace-smile, lips twitching with effort and arousal. An expression adjacent to pain, but his eyes are blown wide and dark. “You humped me in a bathroom, remember?” The words comes out close to a sneer because of the tightness in his cheeks, the way his lips are pulled across his teeth. “It takes me back.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie grumbles, not much fire to it. He drops his forehead back to Richie’s shoulder, hiding his face. He doesn’t want to see Richie’s face anymore, either, the look of light amusement. This isn’t fucking _funny_. 

“Yeah,” Richie agrees, chuckling. “Fuck me.” It’s not a challenge, it doesn’t even sound that sexual; it’s closer to resignation. 

Eddie tightens his grip on Richie’s cock, jacking him harder, but arrhythmically, helped by the even sway of Richie’s hips, back against his dick and forward into his hand. Eddie’s thrusts are stuttering already, he’s close and could finish himself off with a couple firm strokes right now—but Richie seems steady. That’s sort of infuriating. It feels like, somehow, Richie is humoring him. Just along for the ride. ( _We should probably make this quick_.) Letting Eddie hump him in the bathroom for the hell of it. And, no, Eddie needs him to be in this with him, just as stupidly _gone_ as he is. This is not fucking fair if Richie gets to keep his cool. 

So Eddie lifts his head and sputters, “Hey, turn around,” as he shoves at Richie’s shoulder. “Wanna blow you.” 

That effectively wipes the smile off Richie’s face, as he turns around, submitting to Eddie’s attempt at manhandling. His upper back thunks against the wall, hips swayed out next to the toilet paper dispenser. His dress pants are still pooled around his ankles, his boxers rolled half-way down his thighs. His dick is red and wet and heavy. Richie fists one hand around the root, nods down at it, and mumbles, “Fucking do it, then.”

Eddie’s knees hit the tile floor too quickly and he shuffles a bit closer, his movement restrained by his own pulled-down pants around his thighs. When he’s settled as close as he can get, one knee between Richie’s spread feet, he replaces his hand around Richie’s dick as Richie withdraws to rest one hand on top of the silver handicap bar and the other on his hip. 

He still seems too casual and confident in his body language, but Eddie thinks he can change that in a moment. And, besides, it’s wildly sexy, Richie leaning nonchalantly against the wall, looking down at Eddie. 

When Eddie takes him into his mouth, Richie lets out a shuddering sigh. His hand leaves his hip to graze over Eddie’s head, briefly, scratching his scalp with his fingernails, before he raises his arm to cover his eyes with a bent elbow. Eddie doesn’t move much though, just holding the hot hard tip of him in his mouth and staring up at him. Eddie wants him to have to do something here, prove he’s not just letting Eddie do what he wants. He wants Richie to want this, and he wants him to show it. 

Richie seems to pick up on all of that, peering down at Eddie from under his folded arm. He’s cautious at first, tilting his hips to slide slowly farther into Eddie’s mouth, until his smooth head bumps up against Eddie’s soft palate. Then he starts to pick up the pace, emboldened as Eddie takes it, his hands holding tight onto Richie’s hips to encourage him. 

“Ah, fuck,” Richie mutters, his eyes pinched shut. “Is it just me, or are you better at this?” 

Eddie’s pulse jumps at the praise. Although it’s kind of a neg, isn’t it? A ‘most improved’ trophy for dick-sucking? Says something about what Richie used to think and kept to himself, apparently. Eddie feels a stir of anger and a competitive impulse, the desperate need to prove himself; and he hates how much it works on him. His jaw aches already and he’s drooling onto his chin; he tries to swallow around him, his throat working, and Richie muffles a broken cry in his fist. 

“You sure you haven’t spent the past year sucking tons of dick? Jesus.” Richie glances down, his eyes half-lidded when they meet Eddie’s. Eddie’s own eyes are watering, and he takes Richie a little deeper as he stares up at him, keeping his mouth relaxed. “Only me, huh?” 

Richie’s hand, which was clenched on the back of Eddie’s head, goes a bit lax, and he drags a thumb over his strained jaw. Then he resumes pumping his hips, keeping his hand over Eddie’s cheek, rubbing at the stretched corner of his mouth, the spit and precome leaking there. As Richie gets closer to the edge, his huffed punched-out breaths get throatier. He seems to want to keep his eyes open, gaze locked on Eddie, but he seems to keep forgetting that, getting lost and letting his head thunk back against the wall, eyes drifting shut, only to snap back to attention. 

Eddie keeps his gaze fixed on him the whole time, his brain having dissolved into a pleasant numbing static at this point. He’s not all that aware of the hard tile floor on his knees or the strain in his jaw; he only has space to think about Richie unraveling, fucking his mouth, in this bathroom in a wedding venue in Chicago, with all their friends dancing and drinking and chatting just down the hall—Eddie can hear the music, muffled, the bass thumping—and Richie’s boyfriend out there with them, maybe wondering where they went. 

Richie’s boyfriend, who teased him a bit at the rehearsal dinner the previous night when Richie snuck off to smoke with Bev, smirked and said, “I thought you were quitting, Richie.” Something about it filled Eddie with such a sudden, blinding, supernova-level rage, that all he could do was sit in his seat, sweating through his shirt, experiencing alternating cold and hot flashes. He was so angry at the time because he was forced to confront that other people got to know Richie, got to love him, got to have little jokes with him. Eddie had never thought of himself as a particularly jealous person, but Richie has a way of unlocking new emotional depths in him, for better and for worse. 

Now, Eddie feels pretty isolated from that reaction. Eddie’s reasonably sure he’s the only one who Richie has fucked in a bathroom—twice now, _Christ_ —and now they’ve _both_ cheated on their significant others with each other, and, well. _That’s_ gotta count for something. He and Richie may have never managed to have something easy or stable, but the intensity and magnetism of their connection is once-in-a-lifetime stuff. As long as Richie feels it too, Eddie thinks he can manage to go back out there after this and engage in some boring smalltalk with Richie’s current boyfriend. He won’t even hate doing it; he’ll probably get some sick thrill from it, chatting with him while he’s still able to taste Richie, bitter on the back of his tongue. 

Richie pulls out of Eddie’s mouth suddenly as he starts to come, swearing and saying Eddie’s name, so some of it lands on Eddie’s tongue and the rest on his lips and chin and even the collar of his shirt. Richie’s no sooner finished than he hauls Eddie to his feet (muttering, “Get the fuck up here, Jesus Christ.”) and Eddie goes, stumbling up and crashing into Richie, who kisses him, licking hungrily into his mouth. 

Eddie had just about forgotten about himself in the midst of everything, but as soon as Richie wraps a hand around his cock, still exposed and wet and throbbing-hard, the need to come hits him like a tsunami, a disorienting wall of water that knocks the air out of him. 

But Richie seems to be out for revenge. He doesn’t move his hand, just holds him in a maddeningly loose grip, with his left hand clutching Eddie’s bare ass, and says into his mouth, “C’mon, work for it.” 

Eddie gives up kissing Richie—he’s breathing too hard now, as he starts thrusting his hips to fuck Richie’s hand—to bite at his neck instead, drawing sharp gasps from Richie’s throat. Every one of Richie’s involuntary responses, he follows with a huffed laugh, like he can’t quite commit to it. 

“Yeah, I like when you get desperate,” Richie says, his breath tickling against Eddie’s forehead and temple. “When you don’t hold back. When you– when you fuck me after I come, and you just take what you want. That was my favorite part, you know.” 

“Rich,” Eddie groans, scraping his teeth over Richie’s neck, the rough stubble beneath his jaw and down closer to his shoulder where the skin smooths out. 

Richie holds his hand still, letting Eddie do all the work with his hips. Eddie braces one hand against the wall, over Richie’s shoulder, and he does feel desperate and he feels ashamed for it, even if Richie likes it—apparently. Why does Richie like this, seeing him lose control? Eddie breathes in huffs that become punched-out whines as he gets closer. 

“Yeah, that’s it,” Richie encourages, his other hand on the back of Eddie’s neck, petting his hair, holding him close, with his face buried against his shoulder. It feels protective and fond, which makes Eddie feel ripped-open and vulnerable in a way he didn’t expect to, given the fast-angry-rough tone of this encounter. 

That’s always been the problem with Eddie, huh? He thinks he can hide behind anger and yell at Richie and push him around, but all it ever does is reveal how much he actually cares. 

Eddie bites down on Richie’s clothed shoulder when he comes, which, yes, feels familiar. 

They breathe together for a minute or two, Richie still leaning against the wall and Eddie leaning against him, forehead on his shoulder, eyes closed. Then they pull away from each other slowly, haltingly, Richie turning and shuffling toward the sink, pants still down around his ankles, to clean himself up. 

In Richie’s absence, Eddie falls back to steady himself against the wall. “Was that…?” He checks his watch. “Well, okay, that was fifteen minutes. Is that long enough to be suspicious?”

It’s out there and said before Eddie really took the time to decide how he wants to play this. Apparently that choice has now been made and he’s playing it: mean, cavalier. Figures. That’s his default, a reflex he’s had for decades. It takes some conscious work to not fall into the habit of pretending he doesn’t care, even if it’s so beyond hope to pretend. 

Richie, just as skilled at dishing it out as he is at taking it, rolls his eyes as he pulls his pants back up and tucks his shirt back in. Eddie watches him, heart aching as Richie adjusts the cuffs of his sleeves, his bowtie. 

“Do you love him?” Eddie asks, his voice small. 

“Who, Caleb?” 

“Uh, yeah,” Eddie says with a surprised, dark little laugh. “Your… boyfriend?” 

Richie frowns into the mirror, leaning in close to examine a faint red mark above his collar. “Oh, that’s real nice, Eds. Thanks for that.” He flicks at the skin before tugging his collar up to partially obscure it. 

“Yeah, well.” Eddie runs a hand over his own throat, where it still feels raw, skin a bit tight from dried saliva. “Returning the favor. Although I guess I don’t have anyone to hide it from.”

Richie turns and looks at him. He sighs, a tense short noise. Feeling more naked than he actually is under the scrutiny, Eddie tugs his pants back up, hurrying to zip and button them. 

“I don’t– I _like_ him,” Richie says finally. “A lot, actually. I mean, he’s…” His eyes get distant and he stares just past Eddie at the paper towel dispenser. He chews on his bottom lip. “He’s fun and energetic, and he’s really into me but he still teases me and gives me shit—not a word outta you,” Richie says, suddenly snapping his eyes back up, his face serious. Eddie snorts and Richie shushes him. “Maybe I have a type, fuck off. Fuck you.” Richie looks away again and crosses his arms over his chest. “And this… I mean, this _sucks_ , that I did this, but also… if we broke up, he’d be fine, I think. And we’re going to, eventually, I don’t think either of us have any delusions about that… But yeah basically I am a piece of shit. If that’s what you wanted to know.”

“I know how you feel,” Eddie mutters. 

Richie looks angry but only for a brief moment. His eyelids flare and then settle again, corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement. “Yeah, I guess you do. Congrats on dragging me down to your level. How do you like the other side?”

“Uh.” Eddie considers having to walk back out there and look Caleb in the eye. Having to say goodnight to both of them when they go back to the hotel at the end of the night, to sleep in the same bed. Having to sleep alone in his own room and wonder if they’re having sex. He lets out a long breath. “Shitty. Like sort of surprisingly shitty?”

“Yeah, I bet,” Richie says with a laugh. He gives himself another once-over in the mirror and then, with a curt nod at Eddie and a flashed, empty smile, he leaves the bathroom. 

Eddie deflates a little in his absence, looking at himself in the mirror. He washes his face and hands with cold water, and goes back to the party.

**Author's Note:**

> *shrugs*


End file.
